


trust

by AppleSun



Category: The Brave (TV 2017)
Genre: Amir's past, Drabble, Gen, He's Kind Of Messed Up, No Dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 05:09:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16528001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AppleSun/pseuds/AppleSun
Summary: Amir Al-Raisani doesn’t trust. It’s just not a thing he does. So many times he’s heard the words ‘trust is everything’, whether it’s being spoken to him by a movie character or the leader of a terrorist cell he’s trying to infiltrate, trust always seems to matter so much to people.Amir just doesn’t get it.





	trust

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so honestly i dont really know what this is. i kinda just opened up google docs and started writing. its kinda depressing so be aware. i guess im just posting this in case someone likes it?? idk
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: mentions of suicide and implied depression
> 
> stay safe my lovelies <3

Amir Al-Raisani doesn’t trust. It’s just not a thing he does. So many times he’s heard the words ‘trust is everything’, whether it’s being spoken to him by a movie character or the leader of a terrorist cell he’s trying to infiltrate, trust always seems to matter so much to people. 

Amir just doesn’t get it.

Maybe it’s because he’s been in the game far too long - years shrouded in story-telling and falsity, burying himself under years’ worth of covers and aliases and lies and more lies and even more lies and so many fucking _lies_. Amir’s been lying for so long he can’t remember what it’s like to fully tell the truth about anything. What it’d be like to tell someone something true and of worth and not have to worry about them stabbing him in the back the moment he turns around. He can’t remember what it feels like to trust, so he supposes that’s why he finds it so useless and unimportant - if he can survive this long without trust, why can’t anyone else?

Amir knows that he definitely used to trust some people. Years ago, now. They were Amir’s everything; his reason to live, his reason to fight, his reason to _exist_. Amir trusted them with everything and anything he had, and they trusted him with the same. And from what Amir can recall, it felt good. Nice. Relaxing. Comforting to know that someone would always have his back no matter what, that despite any circumstance they would be there. But it doesn’t matter anymore - anyone Amir ever trusted is gone now. 

That’s why being with the team is so weird. They obviously trust eachother with absolutely everything, and expect to be informed on any going-ons in eachother’s lives. They talk about their feelings and how they’re coping with things so easily. Everything is so _open_. They’re so comfortable with eachother, too - Amir can tell from the way Dalton lets McG and Jaz steal food from his plate, the way they tease and bicker with eachother, the way McG casually slings his arms around Preach and Jaz’s shoulders and the way Jaz actually leans into him - and it makes Amir’s chest ache hollowly, sometimes so painful he has to physically remove himself from the room to gather himself, because it reminds him so much of something that can never be again. Something he’s lost and will never get back.

Amir knows that if the team ever finds out he doesn’t trust them, they’ll be hurt. Confused and bitter and maybe even angry, but hopefully they’d understand it’s not really Amir’s fault. He’s just too fucked in the head from all the shit that he’s been through - but then, Amir has to remind himself, they don’t actually know any of the stuff he’s been through.

But not trusting the team doesn’t mean that Amir doesn’t believe they’ll have his back during his a mission - he knows they will, they’re completely capable of doing so; they proved that in Paris. So maybe Amir trusts them on that level, if a scale of trust exists, that they won’t let his head get blown off on an op, but he doesn’t trust them enough to tell him about the nightmare he had last night, or why he can’t stand May 5th’s, or any of the missions he’s completed in the past. He doesn’t trust them enough to not sell him out to one of his enemies if they told them they’d be paid just enough, or judge him if he told them something he’d done, or tell them about the people he loved. _Still loves_ , if it’s possible to love the dead. He doesn’t trust them enough for that, and that’s okay. It is.

Amir doesn’t _need_ to trust.

Sometimes Amir feels like he’s drowning in lies, even now that he’s finally escaped the undercover-life for a bit. He feels so overwhelmed and messed up and sick to the stomach, like he can’t do this anymore. The other day, he woke up and couldn’t remember his birthday - _Amir’s_ birthday, not Khedani or Hijazi or any of his other aliases’ birthdays, _his_ birthday. And Amir is aware of how messed up that is, he really is. He knows it’s not right or healthy or good for him, but since when is Amir any of those things? He feels like he’s starting to slip, starting to lose it. He supposes he knew it was going to happen eventually, he just didn’t expect it so soon - his current posting with the D.I.A is probably the easiest posting he’s ever had, aside from the frantic adjustment to functioning in a team again and living with other human beings who aren’t terrorists. So why is he losing it? Why is he losing track of what was real and what wasn’t, why is he having some weird fucked up version of an identity crisis during the few months that he’s actually allowed to be as Amir as he has been in years?

Maybe that’s the problem, though. Maybe he just can’t remember what being Amir was like.

That’s what makes the most sense, he supposes. He’s been undercover for so long, lying for even longer, that he can’t handle it. But that doesn’t make sense, Amir has been in much more terrifying and stressful positions than this, and he handled it smoothly and easily and without falter. And it’s not that Amir doesn’t lie anymore, either. He lies everyday, whether it’s about how much sleep he got last night, or that file Dalton was given on him that he still somehow believes is true - it’s not, actually, none of it is. Everything from the age twenty upwards is a complete lie, and Amir knows every word of it off by heart. He can remember that, but not his own birthday. 

Amir assumes Director Campbell knows that the file is a fake, that the C.I.A sent it over just to appease the people upset about having a C.I.A operative work with ‘ _good military folk_ ’, to give them an idea of his past and settle any inter-agency spats (Amir understands the issue - a C.I.A operative on loan to the D.I.A within a military team, it sounds like the beginning of a terrible joke). Amir is glad for the fake file, he really is. He doesn’t think he’d be able to handle it if Top knew about all the shit that Amir has done for the agency, for the "great country of America", even though Amir hasn’t set foot in the States for years.

Sometimes Amir is so _ashamed_. He’s so ashamed of what he’s done, of what he knows he’s going to do, because it only gets worse. Amir doesn’t know how, but it will, and this stop with the D.I.A in Turkey is just a break in the cycle. Some of the shit that Amir has pulled on people - it’s messed up, and looking back, he doesn’t know how he had the stomach to do it, even though he knows deep inside that he’s only gotten more ruthless and really, he could do it again. He’d just never want to. 

The team wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t. As badass and amazing and strong as they are, they’re still military, through and through. They still follow protocol and rules, and even have these set lines in their minds that they refuse to cross. Amir thinks he might have had those once upon a time, but he’d have dropped it before his third mission. So he admires them for that, for sticking to their boundaries and setting rules and actually following them, because while, yes, Amir would have died long ago if he’d done that, he would have died a much, much better person than he is now. 

One of the weirdest things Amir has had to adjust to, by far, is the constant chattering in his earpiece. Sometimes from Washington, sometimes from McG or Preach or Jaz or even Dalton, but they talk over the comms _so much_. Bickering or arguing or teasing, the comms are quite often a warm and friendly space, which is just weird because in the past when Amir had used comms in a team-setting, they were tense and quiet and hostile. It’s also that Command is always there. In his ear, listening in, giving orders or advice, and while, yes, it’s useful, it also grates on Amir’s nerves like he can’t believe. Amir’s not used to being given constant direct orders or be under such pressure to actually obey them, and it makes him so unbelievably stressed. Maybe it’s partly due to the fact that Amir doesn’t trust any of Command, either. Why should he? He’s never met them, and while they’ve proven very reliable, that doesn’t make them worthy of trust.

It always comes back to trust.

Sometimes, Amir thinks he hates trust. Hates the pointlessness of it, hates how unsteady and unreliable it is, hates how emotionally tolling it is, hates how absent it is in his life. Other times, Amir misses trust. It leaves an aching hole in his chest because he misses it so, misses being able to entirely give himself to someone, misses being able to let his guard down, because he is so tired. He’s so tired of always being paranoid, always glancing over his shoulder, always waiting for something to go wrong and for everything to collapse on top of him. He knows it’s going to happen eventually; it does to everyone, even the top operatives. He’s just terrified of it. 

Amir has this intrusive thought, quite often, that he tries to avoid as much as humanly possible. The gist of it is; _I wish it would all just stop_. By that, Amir doesn’t mean dying. In the Quran, suicide is classified as a sin, and anyways, Amir isn’t even suicidal. He’s not. He would never purposely off himself, he just means that he wouldn’t really mind if he died. It’s not like he has anyone to grieve him, and honestly everything would be so much easier if he just died. But he’d never do it on purpose, he swears. He wouldn’t. By wanting it to stop, Amir means that he wants life to so just sort of… pause. So he can just take a moment to understand everything, to just… relax. Sleep. Process. _Breathe_. 

Amir can’t remember the last time he properly breathed. 

Amir’s just getting so, so unbearably tired. He finds it hard to get out of bed in the morning, hard to bring himself to even open his eyes because he’s just so _exhausted_. Everything hurts, his chest feels empty and hollow, and there’s this pit in his stomach which feels like it’s just getting bigger and bigger until there’ll be nothing of him left, and he misses his old team _so_ fucking much it feels like his grief is going to strangle him. Amir hopes it will get better. He really does, because he doesn’t know if he can do this much longer. He’ll go on, of course, he’ll fight to the end, but… he still kind of wants it to stop. 

God, Amir is so fucking tired. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! i hoped you liked it and i really appreciate any kudos or comments (especially comments, they literally make my day) anyways thank you!!!
> 
> <3


End file.
